


Twenty Three

by neggsi



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble, Other, Trans Character, Trans Junkrat, radiation poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:58:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neggsi/pseuds/neggsi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life sucks when you're living with both radiation sickness and dysphoria. Short drabble, trans Junkrat, focuses on the joys of being trans and also having the underlying threat of radiation sickness in the irradiated Australian outback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Three

Radiation sickness was a hell of a thing. On his good days, Junkrat would only vomit maybe once. On his bad days, it seemed like he might actually die right then and there.

It was worse when he realised he wasn’t like the other female junkers. Sure, he was just as dirty, violent and legitimately sick as the rest of them, but the whole “boob” thing and the junk he didn’t want? Definitely not like the other female junkers. Probably because, as he realised from the moment his young body hit puberty, he wasn’t a girl in the first place.

The thing about puberty, at least for an eleven-year-old junker child, making do in a world that seemed completely against him, was that it was generally really unpleasant. As if occasionally coughing up blood wasn’t enough on its own, the bleeding from _other places_ really took the cake. It was like his own personal apocalypse was there to remind him that things weren’t going to get any better. It was pretty hard to seem like a male child when the dirty clothes he had to use to soak it all up would constantly leak and stain his shorts.

Yuck.

To make things even better, his body started physically changing too. A growing boy, on his twelfth birthday, wrapped some stolen medical bandages over the tiny lumps of fat he refused to accept, binding them towards his body to keep up the image. It didn’t take long for him to notice that _it hurt_ , and that whenever he had a bad fit of coughing or he was just a little bit sicker than normal, he could physically feel his ribs bruising.

By the time he was nineteen, Junkrat had given up the bandages and just accepted that he was going to have boobs for the rest of his damn life. On the bright side, he wouldn’t have long to live anyway, with a slightly deformed ribcage from years of unsafe binding and radiation sickness that could have him in bed for days on end, there was no way he was going to live past his twenties.

When he blew off his arm in an attempted heist for money, one which was only half-heartedly stopped by the local junkers, he took it as a sign that maybe he wasn’t going to live past his twentieth birthday. He’d long made peace with that though, and scared the doctor in the next town half to death when he came in cackling and covered in blood.

“When ya fix this, d’ya think you can cut off me tits too?” he’d asked, laying a handsome wad of bloody notes on the broken doctor’s desk. “Useless buggers they are.”  
He’d passed out from blood loss before he’d even gotten a response.

He was surprised to find that, when he’d woken up, the doctor had actually done what he’d asked.

In all his recklessness, Junkrat somehow made it to his twenty second birthday, an expert in explosives and a wanted criminal, even to the junkers. He had secrets now, knew things that could save his life and end it in the same instance. He had money, more than he’d ever dreamed of as a child, and enough of a reputation to land himself a bodyguard. Fifty-fifty wasn’t a sum he’d necessarily meant to offer, but things felt more at peace once he wasn’t travelling alone.

Roadhog, his bodyguard’s name was. A big guy with a big gun, a mask that only made sense in the irradiated outback, and a motorbike in pristine condition. It was rare to find something so perfect, at least in the junkertowns of the outback.

Bodyguard or not, Roadhog was the perfect partner in crime. He didn’t question Junkrat’s strangely erratic ways, he went along with whatever ridiculous plan the boy came up with next, and he had a killer treatment for the radiation. It didn’t fix it, but breathing in that bottled stuff he carried around brought a relief he had deserved but not gotten in years.

“What’dya even need it for?” his Roadhog had asked. Alone in a dirty motel room with the curtains drawn, Junkrat had been counting the prize money between metal fingers. He giggled, just a little, whenever he noticed blood splattered across a note.

The junker looked up from his counting, a wide grin spreading across his features as he spoke. “It’s just fun,” he announced, twitching slightly before turning back to his counting. “S’not like the suits need it! So, more for me!”

He laughed again, resisting the urge to throw the money up in the air to emphasise how pointless it really was. Roadhog shrugged, his expression unreadable behind his trademark gas mask. ‘Rat hadn’t even seen him take that off to eat.  
 It was the next time that Junkrat got really sick that Roadhog questioned him again, standing outside the locked bathroom door of their shitty motel room and listening to ‘Rat heave into the toilet. Not needing to bind had relieved the stress on his ribcage significantly, but the odd angles in which some of his bones had grown due it all still caused him pain, like the ghost of his bandages were still there. With every heave came a short gasp of pain, sparking through his lungs at a rate he thought he could forget.

There was blood this time, and a lot of it, but nothing he hadn’t seen before. He was so used to blood by now, but it didn’t make the experience any less painful.

When his stomach finally seemed to settle, he set his forehead down on the cool toilet seat and groaned, his metal hand moving to grasp his stomach slightly. He could deal with this, he _knew_ he could deal with this, but for now he allowed himself a moment of weakness.

“You okay boss?”

The question caused the junker to lift his head slightly, a smirk playing at his lips. Roadie was out there, fretting over him like a concerned boyfriend. Next time he’d be demanding to hold back his hair.

“’M fine,” he called back lazily, laying his head on the seat at an angle where he could stare at the door. “It just happens sometimes.”

Silence once more, and for once in his life Junkrat enjoyed it. There was a throbbing in his head, probably from all the heaving, and the silence made it just slightly easier to bare.

After a while, ‘Rat was sure that Roadhog had left him alone, but the sudden jingling of the door handle quickly pushed away that thought. It wasn’t just the sort of jingle you’d get from a locked door determined not to budge though. No, Junkrat was accustomed to that kind of jingle.

The door clicked, and before Junkrat could protest it swung open to reveal a hesitant Roadhog, lock pick in hand.

The junker gave a heavy sigh and just closed his eyes, too tired from his sickness to really want to deal with this. “Good thing I wasn’t takin’ a shit,” he grumbled.

“Funny sounding shit,” Roadhog grumbled back, letting himself in and setting his lockpick on the bathroom sink.

More silence, until Junkrat felt his stomach boiling and more of that damn shit rising up his throat. He moved his head just in time for the contents to spill out into the toilet. At least from the looks of it, it wasn’t as much blood this time.

He took a few heaving breathes, flinching at the pain that filled his torso, before deciding it was safe again. He lifted his head, wiped his mouth with the back of his flesh hand and looked at the other man in the room.

“Radiation,” he explained, shrugging his shoulders slightly. Without the coolness of the toilet seat, he was suddenly aware of how damn _hot_ it was in the room.

“Figured,” ‘Hog replied, scratching the back of his neck a little awkwardly. Junkrat didn’t need to see his face to know he was feeling more than a little out of place.

They stared at each other, neither quite sure what the correct course of action was to take next. Did they talk about it? Was Roadhog even going to offer any sort of help, or was he just going to stand there and gawk?

Finally, Roadhog broke the silence. “Need anything?”

His voice was even unsure, despite the gruff tone he used. He shouldn’t have, and he knew it, but Junkrat laughed anyway, interrupted only by a painful coughing fit. Roadhog knelt down and put a large hand on his shoulder, as if that would help anything, and simply waited for the coughing to cease.

When it did, Junkrat gently nudged the hand off his shoulder, giving the big guy a half-hearted smile. “If they ever find a cure for radiation, all that money’s gonna come in handy,” he joked.

“You know they have meds that can help?” Roadie offered. Junkrat waived a hand dismissively at him.

“Nah thanks, drug fucked is the last thing I wanna be.”

The big guy laughed, much more genuinely than the sinister ones the junker had grown accustomed to. He could almost imagine the smile beaming through that mask. Almost.

“That’s fair,” he agreed. “But not all of ‘em are bad.”

This time, it was Junkrat who laughed. Yeah, right, meds that didn’t fuck with his head for days? “And Bob’s your uncle, mate,” he said, feeling relief when his laughter didn’t erupt into anything else.

“No, seriously,” the larger man said, causing Junkrat to look up at him quizzically. “Some of ‘em can change everything about you. Stop you growing hair, start it growing, change your voice…”

“Where ‘re you goin’ with this?” ‘Rat asked suspiciously, his eyes narrowing for some sort of indication that Roadhog was going to double cross him or… something.

There was a moment of silence, which was only broken by an onset of heaving coming from the straggly boy sitting by the toilet. Much to Junkrat’s amusement, Roadie did actually hold his hair away from his face this time.

“I’ll tell ya later,” ‘Hog muttered, tending to the more urgent matter of Junkrat’s sickness.

At age twenty-three, Junkrat convinced Roadhog to rob a doctor’s clinic to nab the treasure he’d been looking for his whole life. Boxes upon boxes, complete with written instructions from the hostages.

At age twenty-three, Junkrat’s voice began to drop.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably delete this later?? I don't know if any of this is even accurate because I have never bound unsafely for extended periods of time. I don't even know why I wrote this or where the inspiration came form? TLDR: Sorry. You can also find me on tumblr (padparadschas-sapphire.tumblr.com)


End file.
